ET Commission opponents have landed: Aliens, go home

"Invasion of the ballot snatchers." That's what the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society calls Jeff Peckman's proposal to have Denver create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission -- a proposal that will go to Denver voters on the August ballot.

"The more research we do, the more furious we get," RMPR's Bryan Bonner says of Peckman's initiative, which his group takes apart on a new website, www.DenverETcommission.org.

For starters, because it's the only non-partisan measure on the August ballot, "it's going to cost $100,000," Bonner points out. That's because only voters who've registered as Democrats and Republicans can vote in the contested primary races, but because of Peckman's proposal, every registered voter in Denver, regardless of affiliation, must get the chance to vote on whether the city needs an ET commission.

And cost isn't their only concern. There's what being known as a haven for ET might do to the city's reputation, and then the supposed science behind the the measure.

"We're here to try to show the truth to people," Bonner says. "Our big push is to tell people to vote 'no.' Not 'Don't vote,' but, 'Vote no.'"

Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword, Denver’s News and Arts weekly, in 1977; she’s been the editor there ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly Colorado Public Television roundtable Colorado Inside Out, the former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies -- a post that got her an unexpected interview with former President Bill Clinton in front of a thousand people (while she was in flip-flops) -- and played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City.